December 2000 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: The Cost of California Liberalism
by Carskadden, Rush 19 Dec '00

19 Dec '00

That link is not working for me, and anyway, as someone for whom ebonics was a first language, your ebonicizer does not impress. But then, as ebonics don't have to be realistic to be funny, yo I'll cut you some slack, muh-fuh-kuh. > -----Original Message----- > From: Tim May [mailto:tcmay@got.net] > Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2000 3:13 PM > To: cypherpunks(a)Algebra.COM > Subject: Re: The Cost of California Liberalism > > > > At 11:58 AM +0000 12/19/00, Ken Brown wrote: > >But the Bush family is from Connecticut or somewhere. They *are* > >Yankees. Bush I never spoke with anything like a Texan > voice & Bush II > >has to try. Bill's parody is a parody of a parody of a Texan > accent, not > >a parody of a Texan accent. > > > >When I worked in the Oil business some of my less sensitive English > >colleagues sometimes tried to parody Texan accents. They > always got it > >very wrong - for example saying "Hooston" most Americans > would instead > >of "Hyooston" as both we English and the Texans do (of > course the name > >is originally Scottish (a place near Glasgow) and in it's homeland is > >"Hooston".) > > > >We find it hard to tell Southern US accents apart from each other and > >(genuinely) hard to tell Southern white accents from > >the sort of black voices Tim rips off so charmingly. > > Surely everyone knows that those voices are not my own handiwork? > > I use the Ebonicizer. > > > Do ya th'o't I'm joking? Just enter yo' text into da bawx at da URL > http://joel.net/EBONICS/translator.asp an' it will magically be > transformed into Ebonics. all ye damn hood ratz.. > > > --Tim May > -- > Timothy C. May tcmay(a)got.net Corralitos, California > Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon > Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go > Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns >

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Find more of what's inside NYTimes.com
by NYTimes.com 19 Dec '00

19 Dec '00

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Re: Tim's Motorcycles
by Steve Mynott 19 Dec '00

19 Dec '00

John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> writes: > The recent US international crime assessement lists global > motorcycle gangs as a major threat to world peace, along with > a couple of dozen new horsemen. The report claims all of > these have rapidly adopted high-tech and info tools to advance > their criminal agendas, and that there simply must be more > global law enforcement cooperation, communications intercepts, > and massive funding to combat these, these, Zen Fau Long > Aum Shirinkyo whirring-spokemeisters. Motorcycle gangs are claimed by the DEA to be major drug traffickers, particularly of synthesised drugs like methamphetamine which they are supposed to have produced since the late 60s. This is presumably why they are listed? -- 1024/D9C69DF9 steve mynott steve(a)tightrope.demon.co.uk progress (n.): the process through which the internet has evolved from smart people in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front of smart terminals.

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The Internet's Zen Pirates
by Alex Shirado 19 Dec '00

19 Dec '00

Toronto Globe and Mail December 6, 2000 The Internet's Zen Pirates A guru preaching moral cleanliness develops a breed of crime-fighting hackers By Geoffrey York MOSCOW -- They call themselves the Viper Brothers, the Software Underground Empire, and Armageddon in Russia. They borrow their philosophy from martial arts and Zen Buddhism. They study at the feet of a bearded guru known as Arvi the Hacker, or simply the Teacher. They are the teenaged students of Russia's first school of computer hacking. And while their skills and bravado might seem dangerous, they say they are the good guys, defending their clients from an international war of viruses, hack attacks and computer crime. The Civil Hackers' School, operating from a shabby little Moscow apartment, is helping shape the new generation of Russian computer whiz kids who have provoked fear and anxiety in the West. Russian hackers are blamed for a series of spectacular feats in recent years. These include stealing the secret Microsoft source codes; ransacking the Pentagon's computers; hacking into Web sites of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; posting thousands of credit-card numbers on the Internet; and stealing millions of dollars from Western banks. The country's post-Soviet economic collapse, combined with its rampant software piracy and its prowess in mathematics education, has created a breeding ground for aggressive young hackers. U.S. commentators have described the hackers as "perhaps the most talented in cyberspace." In Moscow, the Hackers' School sees itself at the forefront of a revolution. "A hacker can do something that influences all of mankind," says the school's founder, 27-year-old Ilya Vasilyev, a former software pirate who is better known on the Internet as Arvi the Hacker. "Every country, every company, needs hackers now," the long-haired teacher tells his students. "You have a feeling that you can do anything. You don't have that in any other job." Several hundred have studied at the hacker school since 1996, earning bracelets with ranks similar to judo belts. (The highest honour is a black bracelet, known as "guru level.") The school, preaching an altruistic moral code, says it trains students for legitimate jobs in computer security, defending employers against viruses or hack attacks. "I won't take students when I see they have a criminal tendency," Mr. Vasilyev says. "A hacker must be a wise person, like a samurai or a karate master. You have to use all of your wisdom not to harm people." But the temptations are constant. The first lesson for freshmen students is a stern warning against illegal hacking. "Many people read about hackers in the newspapers and they think how great it is," Mr. Vasilyev tells the teenagers. "But they don't read to the end of the article, where the hacker gets sentenced to jail." The students sit at the guru's feet on the floor of his cramped apartment. When he asks them to name the school's goals, 15-year-old Kirill Boldyrev replies, "To break into things." The teacher quickly corrects him, but later the teenager acknowledges he sees hackers as heroes. "They have achieved a very difficult thing, a very unusual thing, so they are admired by a lot of people. Maybe it proves that we aren't stagnating in Russia, that we are progressing." The latest hacker exploit was the daring raid on Microsoft, in which the secret source codes for the latest Windows program were taken. The raider was traced back to Russia's second-biggest city, St. Petersburg, which has become a hotbed of hacking. Russian hackers first captured the world's imagination in 1994 when a young mathematician, Vladimir Levin, hacked into the computers of Citibank and transferred $12-million (U.S.) to the bank accounts of friends around the world. He conducted the entire operation from a computer in his St. Petersburg apartment. He was eventually arrested and jailed, but others were inspired to similar feats of cybercrime. Ilya Hoffman, a brilliant viola student at the Moscow Conservatory, was arrested in 1998 on charges of stealing $97,000 (U.S.) over the Internet. He served a year in jail. Another group of Russians stole more than $630,000 by hacking into Internet retailers and grabbing credit-card numbers. Banking-fraud specialists have warned that Russian hackers are the greatest single threat to security at European banks. Crime has become institutionalized in Moscow's outdoor markets and street kiosks, where about 90 per cent of the computer software is pirated. The widespread acceptance of piracy has made it easier for hackers to ignore the law. "Piracy is prospering, and nobody is fighting it," said Sergei Pokrovsky, the 25-year-old editor of Khaker, a hacker magazine that has built a circulation of 50,000 in just two years of operation. "Pirate software is for sale everywhere. People get used to the idea that piracy is normal. Computer crimes aren't seen as very serious. The police have so many other problems on their hands. A lost credit card is seen as nothing, compared to murder and all the other crimes in this country." Because of the shortage of high-paying computer jobs in Russia, even skilled specialists can be limited to salaries of just a few hundred dollars a month. Hacking is a tempting alternative. By stealing a password, they can use the Internet for free. And by cracking programs or doing pirate software jobs in the evening, they can boost their incomes considerably.

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by hherrera＠dcci.com 19 Dec '00

19 Dec '00

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(no subject)
by PFSanta Claus 19 Dec '00

19 Dec '00

Hi, I came across your addies in a search off ask Jeeves and thought perhaps due to the way your interests run you might be up on this topic. I'm a Sr. Support Analyst for a large vendor and recently was asked by one of my casual internet contacts if there was a way to prevent a "keyboard logging" surveillance program from prevailing on their system and reporting the goings on from their keyboard. In an effort to be helpful, I set about my normal pattern of research and found that there seems to be a ton of info promoting various products, yet there is virtually nothing I could find which offers any realistic or reliable countermeasures that can be taken to prevent someone from logging the output from your keyboard. Even the hackers seem to think it isn't a threat to anyone's privacy. Weird... So anyway, all I'm asking is that should you know where I can find resources that assist me in defeating such software (especially if it's undetected), I would gratefully accept any guidance you could offer. That's all I need, I won't take anymore of your time. Peace, Tom (aka Santa) _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

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RE: Freenet and anarcho-capitalist
by Trei, Peter 19 Dec '00

19 Dec '00

Bob, this is the opposite problem from posting an entire article in HTML. You've provided no info beyond the subject line as to why I or anyone should look at slashdot. Slashdot puts out 10-12 articles a day; which one should I look at? At the very least, you could have given the URL for a specific article, as it is your uninformative link becomes even more useless as it rapidly ages. It's really not too hard to do the Right Thing; Here's an example from today's /.: ---------start example------------ http://slashdot.org/articles/00/12/19/149227.shtml Judge Says Port Scanning Is Legal Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday December 19, @10:09AM from the thousands-of-lines-of-log-files dept. cvbear0 writes: "SecurityFocus has an article explaining a ruling from a U.S. district court ruling in Georgia about port scanning. The judge ruled that that port scanning tools neither "impair the integrity nor availability of the network." Both parties agreed not to appeal the judge's ruling." -----------end example--------------- ...that took me about 15 seconds - 1 click to get to the specific article (so I could easily get the article specific URL) and 2 cut-and-paste actions (one for the URL and one for the teaser text). If you won't show any common courtesy towards your intended audience, don't expect them to read your postings. Peter Trei > ---------- > From: Jim Choate[SMTP:ravage@einstein.ssz.com] > Reply To: Jim Choate > Sent: Saturday, December 09, 2000 8:57 AM > To: cypherpunks(a)einstein.ssz.com > Subject: CDR: Freenet and anarcho-capitalist > > > http://slashdot.org > > ____________________________________________________________________ > > Before a larger group can see the virtue of an idea, a > smaller group must first understand it. > > "Stranger Suns" > George Zebrowski > > The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate > Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com > www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 > -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- > -------------------------------------------------------------------- >

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Re: Houston [was: The Cost of California Liberalism]
by Trei, Peter 19 Dec '00

19 Dec '00

> Ken Brown[SMTP:k.brown@ccs.bbk.ac.uk] wrote: > > When I worked in the Oil business some of my less sensitive English > colleagues sometimes tried to parody Texan accents. They always got it > very wrong - for example saying "Hooston" most Americans would instead > of "Hyooston" as both we English and the Texans do (of course the name > is originally Scottish (a place near Glasgow) and in it's homeland is > "Hooston".) > And in the Big Apple we can tell out-of-towners in a New York second by asking them the name of the street at the southern base of the numbered grid system. It's Houston Street, and every citizen knows it's 'house-ton'. "It doesn't matter where you are; if it's not New York, you're Out Of Town." Peter Trei

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Get e-mail from United and 1,000 bonus miles
by United Airlines 19 Dec '00

19 Dec '00

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Re: keyboard loggers.
by Scot Scot 19 Dec '00

19 Dec '00

Alright... gotta get my two centz in here. #Yo out to Bill S... always good advice I'm guessing that with santa's problem it is almost impossible to keep people from putting key loggers onto a system if they have physical access to them. HPFS (Easy to beat) NTFS (Easy to beat) NTFS 5 (Easy to beat) UFS (Easy to beat) FAT (hahahahahhaha) It's all risk assessment Santa. If you don't trust your elves ya gotta pull the floppy, Zip, CD-ROM etc... access. Key loggers are easy to code and can be named whatever you call them. You could however write a simple program to look for all the executable files on your systems and the do a sum of the previous days results to see if there are any changes. Intrusion detection is key to picking this stuff up... its a process you engauge in. Not a capability you will be able to attain. Scoty "It's all about the Pentium" -Wierd Al >From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart(a)pobox.com> >To: "PFSanta Claus" <pf_santa(a)hotmail.com>, cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Subject: Re: keyboard loggers. >Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 23:23:22 -0800 > >If you have to worry about people installing keyboard logging >programs on your machine without your permission, either >- you're using a public shared machine at a coffeeshop or school > or Kinko's to do things you think need security, or >- you're using your employer's machine, and shouldn't do things > that are inappropriate to do at work, >- you're using your employer's machine, and need a new employer > who trusts his employees instead of feeling compelled > to spy on them, >- you're using your employer's machine, and your employer has > a serious security problem with people trying to crack in at night, >- you're sharing your home machine with a teenager who runs > all sorts of game programs downloaded off the net > or borrowed from friends, viruses and all, >- you've got serious security problems of your own - > if they can sneak in and install programs like that, > they can install anything else they want, > copy your hard disk, probably even steal your hard disk, or >- the paranoids really are out to get you. > >For the shared-machine problem, don't use insecure machines >to do secure stuff. Use disposable email accounts, >American Express one-shot credit card numbers, >and if you must log in to something, use one-time passwords >(either S/Key or SecureID tokens or some similar mechanism.) > >There's been some work done on encryption programs that run >in hand-held computers, whether Palm Pilot things with displays >or JavaRings or smartcards without them. Matt Blaze, Ian Goldberg, >and Martin Minow have done presentations on those topics. > >I'll leave you to figure out employer problems, >and there are professionals who can help with paranoia, >as long as you get to them before the Feds get to you. > >One approach for the teenager problem (or the related problem of >machines for lab use, especially firewall research) >is removable disk drives. You can get disk drive drawers for >IDE/Ultra/DMA/etc for about $20, and spare disks are only $100 or so. >Keep a clean copy for installing software you trust, >password-protected-screensavered to reduce accidents, >and give the kid his own disk to play with, >plus teach him how to reinstall software from CD-ROM >when it gets trashed. It's the computer equivalent of >buying a full-sized beater car for your kid to learn to drive in - >extra weight, airbags, and an exterior you don't care about dents in. > >If the kid has his own machine, and you're sharing a network, >that's more trouble. You'll have to firewall your machine >off from the kid's, or at least mainly run the clean copy >disconnected from the net, and make sure the kid keeps >current virus protection installed and running. > > >At 12:05 PM 12/18/00 -0900, PFSanta Claus wrote: > >Hi, > > I came across your addies in a search off ask Jeeves and thought >perhaps > >due to the way your interests run you might be up on this topic. I'm a >Sr. > >Support Analyst for a large vendor and recently was asked by one of my > >casual internet contacts if there was a way to prevent a "keyboard >logging" > >surveillance program from prevailing on their system and reporting the > >goings on from their keyboard. In an effort to be helpful, I set about my > >normal pattern of research and found that there seems to be a ton of info > >promoting various products, yet there is virtually nothing I could find > >which offers any realistic or reliable countermeasures that can be taken >to > >prevent someone from logging the output from your keyboard. Even the >hackers > >seem to think it isn't a threat to anyone's privacy. Weird... > > > Thanks! > Bill >Bill Stewart, bill.stewart(a)pobox.com >PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639 _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

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